LowFares.com unveils its re-launch, radically changes its business model

LowFares.com has re-launched itself as the premier travel product comparison research site for consumers looking for discount travel.

Re-launching itself as premier online travel comparison research site, the company says the focus of LowFares.com's travel web site is to provide consumers with the "first true, side-by-side comparison of discount travel prices from various travel sites, accessible from a single site".
   
"This saves the user time by eliminating the need to visit each site individually to perform their search since LowFares.com directly connects the user to the travel sites to compare the trips," the company stated.
   
"We've radically changed our business model where we served consumers as an online travel agency, competing with other sites and earning revenue from each booking and made a fundamental shift to become an online travel marketing firm where LowFares.com works with other travel sites to promote those merchants," said Joshua Lippiner, president of LowFares.com, a travel web site for discount travel.

"Our focus quickly centered on comparison shopping and finding ways to make the consumer's ability to find travel easier," Lippiner said.

In response to this, research was conducted to identify consumer pain points. The following pain points were found in this order:
1. Finding the best price
2. The number of sites people have to search to find the best price
3. The amount of time it takes them to search for the best price

LowFares.com also learned that the average consumer shops three sites, on average, before making a travel purchase, stated the company. "LowFares.com executives concluded that consumers are essentially "feed-up" with researching travel online, since they have to spend so much time jumping back and forth between searching suppliers and online agencies. There are also sites that aggregate information from multiple sites called meta-searchers, but many consumers include those sites as another place they need to compare," stated the company.

"With this knowledge, we developed the first, side-by-side comparison travel site for consumers, letting them directly connect to suppliers, agencies and meta-searchers. We save the travel shopper a considerable amount of time since they only have to enter their search once on LowFares.com, pick three sites they want to compare and then we launch those sites, run the shopper's search and display the three sites side-by-side," Lippiner said.